The Question without a Mark
by Nyah
Summary: He's the last piece in the puzzle. She's been meaning to ask for weeks now. BB.
1. 1

**Disclaimer:** All characters own in complicated ways by Hart Hanson, Kathy Reichs, and Fox.

**Time line:** Let's say this is set sometime in the near future, though it really could be any time post-season 2.

**Note:** I seem to be on a grammar kick, title-wise. This isn't actually related to "The It without an Antecedent" except that I wrote them both. Also, toss e-tomatoes at me if you like but preferably not for the end of this part which is not the end of the story.

**The Question Without a Mark**

**(1)**

He's been waiting for this for weeks now.

Ever since she'd announced from the passenger seat that she'd be taking some time off. (They'll sail his boat to a cluster of islands somewhere and she'll come back tan and rested. Like she should have done the first time. But this time he won't try to take her away for a year. Just a few weeks.)

Ever since he'd gotten the Save the Date magnet in the mail. (He hadn't put it up on the fridge. It wasn't like he was going to forget what day it would be. But then there it was one day, holding up Parker's latest spelling test. When his son saw him looking at it, he said, "I found it in the drawer with the silverware." Parker scuffed his shoe nervously against the floor. "You're not mad at me for cutting off the part with that guy, are you? It was just … Bones looks really pretty but I didn't like him smiling at her.")

Ever since the air in the Jeffersonian had gotten thick with strain, since the squints started going quietly about their business with the look of the children of warring parents. (Cam had accepted by default, she said. She hadn't really believed she was hearing the question before she said "yes." "I almost turned her down, Booth," Angela said over sandwiches at the diner. "Why would you do that?" He'd asked in horror. "She's your best friend." Angela shook her head sadly and gave him a good, long stare. "No woman wants to be part of the wrong wedding. Especially if it's her best friend's.")

She'd been putting it off, stepping carefully around it, for weeks now. She had to ask. They all knew there was something wrong behind it all. (Knew because of Parker's mangled magnet that kept falling off the fridge because he'd stuffed too many papers under it by now. Knew by the way Angela frowned at the dress, hating it because it was too beautiful. Knew by the way Sully didn't want to take her away for a year this time. Just a few weeks. Just the rest of her life.)

So he expected it. Because he was the last piece in the wrong puzzle. But she could make a pretty picture out if it anyway if she forced him to fit.

She stands in front of him now, compulsively straightening the dog-eared edge of some report or other.

"Spit it out, Bones," he says more harshly than he means to.

"I've been meaning to ask...."

"So ask."

"...If you'll give me away." She'd been looking down but now she looks up almost defiantly. She knows it's wrong, at least, but he stills feels like he's been sucker-punched.

He'd expected her to ask him to be a part of the wedding party, to stand on Sully's side since Sully didn't give a damn who was standing next to him as long as he got to stand across from her. He'd expected to watch her walk toward him only to turn to someone else at the last minute. He'd expected her to ask him to sit in a front row seat at his own execution. He didn't expect her to ask him to flip the switch.


	2. 2

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Note:** This was going to be a two-parter but then Angela had to have her say. So there will be a third (and final) part.

**(2)**

"It's the worst part of the whole antiquated ritual, in my opinion," she says brusquely. "The father hands his daughter over to the groom like she can't ever stand for herself. I don't want that. But I understand the symbol. One family to another."

"Did you explain it Booth like that?" Angela asks, putting her sandwich down with delicate fingers. (They're at the diner because it's safe. Like the lab. Safe because Booth is avoiding Brennan and she's refusing to be avoided by keeping to their usual patterns, putting herself in the places he should be. This, in turn, is her own way of avoiding him. By being predictable she's giving him a wide berth. He knows exactly where she'll be.)

"Yes!" Brennan insists with frustration. (She knows she's asked him to do something unsavory and she's apologized for putting him in the role of latent misogynist. Guilt is the right emotion but the wrong reasons are behind it. She's always had trouble getting emotions right.)

"And he said 'no'?" Angela asks. (Usually she's a great predictor of behavior but if she'd been asked before hand, she would have said the greater danger in the question was that Booth would say 'yes'. He'd do anything for her. Die for her. Give her away.)

"No," Brennan says, frustration cooled by confusion. "I explained to him that you guys have been my family more than my biological family ever has. I thought perhaps he was concerned he'd be usurping my father's role …. But he said I should ask you. I told him you're the Maid of Honor already."

"_Me?_" Angela asks with surprise she doesn't feel. (The wedding paints itself in her mind and she's there gliding down the aisle in time with the music, Brennan on her arm, smiling. The guests are smiling. It's quirky and fun. The beginning of something that will never be traditional. But a little paint thinner and a few brush strokes and it's Booth's face painted over hers. The whole mood changes. It's the end of something tragic.)

"But I want it to be him," Brennan plows on. "You understand, Angela?"

Angela nods. (She understands. Better than Brennan does. The Jeffersonian is home and Booth is the man she comes home to. He is the one who never has to ask about her darkest secrets because she's already told them to him. He's the one who invites her up for coffee and sits by her patiently to drink it because she's never understood that an invitation up for coffee is an excuse to make love. He's the only person she's ever really given herself to so he's the only person who can give her away.) "So ask him again."


	3. 3

**Disclaimer:** See part 1

**Note:** Part 3/3

**[3]**

She'd been uncomfortable all day. Putting an end to things with Sully had been easier than it should have been. Even she knew this. (They'd never set a date, never booked a location, or chosen a color scheme. She told herself it was because those things didn't matter to her. She'd be just as happy getting married at a courthouse and telling everyone the next Monday. In the end, he watched her walk away from a fight he'd already lost. In the end, he said she'd never really said 'yes' to begin with.)

Still, nothing feels ended, complete. (People talk about break-ups like they are decisive moments. But she knows that life, more often than not, happens in cycles. The body, for instance, is governed almost entirely by negative feedback. The deficit of one chemical starts a chain reaction. When enough of the first chemical is made, the reaction stops. Until the body is lacking once more. Then it all begins again. For her, relationships are like that. She feels a void, of companionship, of sex, and when it is filled, she's finished until the ache begins again.)

Her unease, she knows, has nothing to do with the man she's refused to marry.

"It hurt me very much that you refused to be part of my wedding," she tells Booth while they're in the middle of talking about something else. (They never come at these things directly. The important things. They sidle up, circle around, skip over, and double-back. It's not until they've pretended at and then peeled back all the things they don't mean that they get to the heart of it.)

"I didn't refuse," he replies. They're on a park bench and it's windy. His collar rides high like blinders.

"You told me to ask Angela!" (It's cold but her arms are open, her hands turned up. She waits for him to explain it to her, to reorder the world so it makes sense and place it back into her palms.) "And then she told me to ask you again."

He shrugs and then tries on a smirk that doesn't quite fit. "You never asked," he says. "You said you'd been meaning to ask but you never actually asked."

"I know." (They've dropped, suddenly to the center of things. She feels like she's sitting on a fault line and the first warning tremors are shivering in her toes.) "I told Sully I wanted you to give me away …. Today, when I broke it off with him, he said he'd known then ... when I said that … that we wouldn't be getting married. He said I was the woman who could do anything, _anything_, except ask."

"Why?"

"Because I'd be afraid you would say yes." (She knows, hates knowing, that he would have broken himself for her. She hates knowing that he can be broken. It's the only thing that's kept her from this bench, from him, for so long. She hates knowing that she has that power.)

"Bones, I …."

She can see it in his eyes then. He would have done it. He understands her. He knows the limits she put on herself, the controls. (If giving her away to Sully had gotten her as close to the thresh hold she'd set on happiness, on love, as she could go, then he'd do it and never look back.)

She looks into his eyes, dark and warm. They are sitting on the fault line and the tremors are starting up her legs now. She leans her forehead against his but not even the heat of his skin or the strength of the bones beneath can still her.

She looks into his eyes and breathes him in.

He is a man who will do anything for her, _anything_, except put her heart at risk.

(There is another sort of force that governs the body. One that is rare. Because it is cataclysmic. The clotting of blood. The birth of a child. _Positive feedback._ Chemicals in the body build exponentially. The creation of one spurns the creation of another. The loop feeds itself, building, building, building. Until nothing can stop it but an _event_.)

She looks into his eyes and the tremors reach her knees. So she kisses him. She kisses him and takes the risk on herself. She kisses him and accepts that power, the power to destroy him by something as simple as walking away.

She kisses him and then she takes him by the hand. She doesn't ask him to come home with her. She doesn't ask him to stay. She doesn't have to ... because he'll do anything for her, anything. He'll say yes.


End file.
